VINCENT VAN GOGH

Vincent van Gogh was born in Groot-Zyundert near Breda 30 March 1853 in a large pastoral family. His childhood in the countryside, forever imprinted in his heart with love for nature and landscape with figures "working people. At the age of ten the boy was making the first sketch from nature and enthusiastically copy vending his lithographs.

Because his father always held positions at non-prestigious parishes well provide for the family he could not and therefore tend to his eldest son Vincent was built in a good place.

At sixteen, never graduated from high school in Tsevenbergene, on the recommendation of relatives Vincent starts commission (junior trader pictures) in the artistic and trading firm Goupil in The Hague and then in her office in London. Here he meets with the works of major English painters, and enjoys Constable, Turner, Gainsborough, Reynolds.

However, the unrequited love for the landlady's daughter, where he lived, made him deeply depressed. Initially, its owners went to meet him and even moved him in 1874 in Paris, thinking that a change of scenery to distract him. Vincent, however, and there could not find rest, and eventually lost his place.

Van Gogh, a short time teaching in an English boarding school in Ramsgate, and since July 1876 has served as an assistant preacher in Aylvarte.

In 1877, Vincent entered the preparatory department of the Faculty of Theology at the University of Amsterdam, but soon throws him out and listen in Brussels a special course for missionaries. It takes the priesthood. His desire to "bring light into darkness," addressed to the miners, "those who work in darkness, and in 1878 he gets a place in Borinazhe preacher in southern Belgium. There is a rupture with the family.

"Impressionable, sensitive to people's grief and injustice, he first felt the impotence of the sermons in the fight against poverty. A young missionary had left his house, gave away all need money, their own clothing and possessions, during the epidemic of typhoid fever did not leave the bedside of patients . . . Already six months, church authorities deprives van Gogh's room "(J. Shapiro).

These developments completely change the course of his life. Series of failures led to Vincent's spiritual crisis, from which he was trying to find a way in art. Role models were primarily the product of Jean Millet. Later, he created a separate track, watercolors and drawings depicting the plight of the miners. In 1880 van Gogh went to Brussels, where he began intensive training in painting. At the same time he became friends with artist Alexander van Rappard.

For teaching art, he goes to Brussels and then from the end of 1881 to 1883 lives in The Hague, where at first his mentor is a distant relative - an artist, a landscape and animal painter Anton Mauve.

Photo — «Vincent Van Gogh»

By this time the first van Gogh painting, executed in oils.

"More and more I feel that I draw a shape - a good thing - wrote to his brother Vincent in 1881 - that it is indirectly a beneficial effect on the work of the landscape. If you paint the willow as if it is - a living thing - and in Eventually the way it is - everything around turns itself . . . "

In 1883, Vincent returned to his parents in Nyuenen. Lived here two years were decisive for the formation of an artist. He painted landscapes and great composition with figures, using dark colors to convey the oppressive atmosphere of life. All of his paintings and sketches are permeated ardent sympathy for ordinary people. Come down to us a very small number of early works by the artist ("Peasant Woman" (1885), "Weaver of the machine" (1884)), because he understood the imperfection of his skill, to destroy them.

The main product of this time, "Potato Eaters" (1885), written in a dark painting scheme, it transferred to the acute perception of poverty, oppressive atmosphere of peasant life.

Thanks to the help of his brother Theo young artist does not need the money, although for the sake of work to deny itself around, spending virtually all their money on canvases, paints and payment Model.

Two years spent in Nuenene van Gogh, were fruitful in creative terms, but the artist's personal life is composed heavily: the sudden illness of mother, failure in love, almost culminating in suicidal friend van Gogh, his father's death.

In December 1885 Van Gogh left his hometown and went to Paris. Van Gogh is attached to the most important phenomena of artistic life in France. He visits the richest museums, where he sees the work of his idol - Millet and discovers Delacroix. Van Gogh meets Impressionist paintings, prints of Japanese artists. He meets Toulouse-Lautrec, Gauguin and Bernard, with Pissarro and Degas, Signac and Seurat.

Van Gogh does not feel like a novice, he was an equal among equals. Pissarro later spoke to his son Lucien: "I knew that van Gogh or go mad, or leave us all far behind. But I never imagined that he would do something, and another. "

At this time, Vincent makes two important discoveries for themselves. Mainly in painting, for it is color. He begins to mix the primary colors with optional, cold - with warm and achieves striking effects. In determining their preferences, it passes through hobbies Japanese prints, opening the East much earlier than members of other avant-garde movements.

Having survived a series of disappointments, van Gogh decided for himself that the artist can not be a family.

Photo — «Vincent Van Gogh»

Now real life is not reduced for him to hearth and home, he is content with random connections.

In February 1888 van Gogh left the bustling Paris and settled in southern France in a small provincial town of Arles. Here he created the wonderful scenery with views of Arles and its environs ("Harvest at Arles," Drawbridge at Arles). He enthusiastically wrote spring blooming gardens ("Tree in Blossom"), provides portraits are interesting to people (some variants portrait "Postman Rulena, members of his family," The Girl from Arles). He appeals to the image of night scenes and the transfer of artificial lighting.

Van Gogh loved tragic color dissonances, concentrated, flammable each other's color harmonies. In The Red vineyards in Arles "(1888) captures the solemn brilliance and richness of stressful life of man and nature. Purple, cinnabar, brown-red, crimson, orange, deep and black and blue colors generate intense colors and orchestration of this picture. Amazingly inspiring images of simple things. In the interior, "van Gogh's Bedroom at Arles" (1888) of leaving the room the artist blows anxiety and hopelessness.

With particular strength is revealed the tragedy of the human soul in "The Night Cafe in Arles" (1888). The atmosphere of homelessness, loneliness. Artist gives exactly the objective world his restless spirit. Rapidly dwindling promising lines of sex, hard angular tables, chairs, increased intensity of color and light - yellow light of kerosene lamps, bright green cloth billiard table, a dark shadow of him, red walls and pink floor, lost in space the lonely people - all this creates mood of ominous melancholy, a keen sense of dissonance surrounding life "(NL Malcev).

The arrival of Gauguin and teamwork are often different temperaments of artists, their differences of opinion on art. Painful condition van Gogh increases. Gauguin decided to leave.

Narrated by JG Shapiro:

"In the evening, Dec. 23, 1888 while walking Gauguin heard hurried footsteps behind him and quickly turned around just in time when van Gogh was ready to rush at him with a razor. Gauguin goes to sleep in a hotel. The same evening, Van Gogh, in a fit of madness injures himself by cutting off his ear. From the hospital he was released in January 1889, but the disease still makes itself felt. In late February, citizens seek to place the van Gogh again in the hospital. In this difficult time, created the famous van gogovsky "Man with a Pipe" (1889) and "Self-portrait with cut ear" (1889, two versions) and "Chair with a tobacco pipe" (1888-1889) - the image of a yellow chair on which sat van Gogh, in broad daylight and "Gauguin's Chair at night lighting "- a sad remembrance of time to work together and apart.

Photo — «Vincent Van Gogh»

In mid-April 1889 van Gogh learns of the marriage of his brother Theo. Feeling loneliness, sick and desperate, he takes a voluntary decision to leave the hospital in Saint-Remy . . . "

While in the hospital for a year and with relative freedom, van Gogh in the intervals between exacerbations of the disease continues. He paints landscapes, depicting the hospital garden and beautiful surroundings: "A great way to Provence" (1890) and "At the foot of the Alps" (1890), "yellow bread with Cypresses" (1889), etc.

In May 1890 van Gogh left the hospital and settled in the small village of Auvers-sur-Oise, near Paris. The form of this area has caused a burst of creative energy there. Van Gogh worked from early morning till night, performing for the last two months of life, 70 paintings and 32 of the drawing. The contrast of the southern and northern nature sharpened his vision, "I. . . I notice that the stay in the south has helped me to better see the north" - confessed to Van Gogh.

For works written here, is characterized by gloomy color combinations, deformed trees, and architectural volumes: "The Chapel in Auvers" (1890), "Ravens in the wheat field (1890)," Cabin "(1890).

Plan another painting "Landscape in the Lake after the rain," a brilliant example of the late artist's style. There are always inherent increased sonority colors, intense dynamism of color, composition, and stroke, sharp lyrical perception of nature reached the highest degree of intensity.

This landscape was painted during his stay van Gogh in the hospital for the mentally ill in Auvers shortly before exhausted, finally fanatics in life and his own work, the artist shot from a pistol wound itself and dies. It happened July 29, 1890.

Throughout his life van Gogh dreamed of a small - within a few thousand francs - an amount that would have given him the opportunity to work quietly. Twenty years after the death of van Gogh's "Landscape at Auvers" and "Red Vineyard was purchased by the famous Russian collector IA Morozov for 33,000 gold rubles. Only part of this money would be enough to for many years to extend the life and work of Van Gogh - one of the greatest artists of the XIX century.

In 1987, van Gogh's painting "Irises" (1889) was sold at Sotheby's in New York for a record price of 53. 9 million dollars. His golden sunflowers adorn the best collections in the world.